Comcast - "12Mb will NOT support WiFi" lol

Archaea

Archaea

[H]F Junkie
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Oct 19, 2004
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Saw this. Tried to call Comcast to have my 105Mb reduced to 12Mb service to save some money as my current service went up to full price recently and outside of promotion pricing it isn't as good a value.
Comcast High-Speed Internet Promotion - $19.99 per month

The Comcast Xfininity CSR, named Brittany, kept assuring me that 12Mb service wouldn't support WiFi and that I'd be calling her back in a day or two to upgrade my service. I said respectfully mam, I'm in IT, have been for about 15 years, and that isn't true. 12Mb internet service will work fine with WiFi. She said well sir, I've been doing this for a long time and I'm a "Xfinity Expert" and Wifi doesn't work at 12Mb speeds. I said mam, I have my own router and your internet speed provided doesn't effect my ability to connect to my router at typical WiFi speeds. I said I understand I'll have reduced capability to have simultaneous streaming functions working on different devices, but my WiFi connection from a single device should be pretty much unaffected. Streaming vide takes 3-5Mb per second typically. 12Mb per second is sufficient for at least a couple WiFi or wired devices and some web surfing as well. She said she wasn't going to argue further about it, but just wanted to let me know it wouldn't work, and that I wouldn't be happy with 12Mb.

She then said she needed to talk to a manager about my service offer promotion link to see if she could offer it.

She came back and said she couldn't offer me that, as that wasn't even a Comcast deal, but she could offer me 10Mb for $49.99 a month. I told her that wasn't a good deal. What other offers could she do? She said nothing cheaper.

She said she could do 250Mb per month for $70 with a 2 year lock (and fee to me if I cancel early). That seems okay --- (price to performance anyway) so I said fine. I'm nearly doubling my current speed and saving a bit a month of what the full price of 105Mb was. Google Fiber won't be in my area for some time, and all in all 250Mb for $70 a month doesn't sound too bad given the lack of Google or AT&T fiber options. My early termination fee is $240, dropping by $10 a month until the 2 years is up. So even if something nice becomes available next year, it'll cost me $120 to cancel in a year. With nothing looming on the horizon - seems like a safe bet.



but lol at my internet service provider saying WiFi doesn't work at 12Mb. :p
 
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So you called in to lower your internet speed but were instead talked in to increasing your internet speed.

Sounds like the sales lady did her job! :p
 
Yep, she full-retarded you right in to a price hike. You let them win. If you'd actually asked to speak to the manager (and possibly the manager's manager -- politely) yourself you'd still have 105Mb and be paying less than you ever did. As someone who used to work in a call center... you're doin' it wrong.
 
Ah c'mon! She's an untrained sales-weasel reading out of a script! She put you on hold, buffed her nails a few times and told you that she couldn't accommodate you. We all know it. Besides, the only way to get anything done right is to walk into your local office and speak to a local employee.
 
What she means is that nearly no normal person has their own router or Wifi AP/Router. And the modem they rent out on the 12MB plan doesn't do Wifi.
 
Well, we don't know if his price went up, I mean many people pay $70 for 100mb service, so maybe he stayed pretty much the same price and 2.5x'd his speed ...
 
extide said:
Well, we don't know if his price went up, I mean many people pay $70 for 100mb service, so maybe he stayed pretty much the same price and 2.5x'd his speed ...
Click to expand...

He said he was only saving a little vs the full price (post-discount) of his previous service. So I'm assuming, not without reason, that he's paying more over all.
 
My aunt was told by a comcast installer that the internet won't work with Windows 98SE. I told her I could get it to work. Sure enough, it worked. I also told her it would be better if she upgraded. This was back in 2007
 
The funny thing is that she offered 10mb for 49.99/month and apparently that WILL do wifi even though she was sure that 12mb would fail with wifi. I guess customer supplied wifi requires a $30/month charge regardless of the ISP supplied connection speed.
 
I can easily see how they would have gotten confused. Perhaps they meant that the equipment they provide for 12mb doesn't do Wi-Fi because it's cheap, and they didn't really have a person with their own Cisco or Linksys equipment in mind when they said that.
 
The salespeople are idiots that are only told what to say, and anyone who knows what they are talking about wouldn't be working as a salesperson for Comcast. The equipment they rent doesn't do WIFi, of course if you run the signal into your own Wifi AP or router it will work. Even if it was 768Kbps DSL it would work (just not fast).

Same thing with the "PC requirements" of WIn XP or higher, with this much RAM etc. That usually applies more to any bloat support software and also if the internet runs like ass they have an excuse to get out of it. Of course it would work on Win98, TCP/IP is the same then as it is now, its not like its a fundamentally different technology. It would work on a Win95 box. I mean c'mon.
 
I called in because I was no longer getting what I considered a good, competitive deal compared to other carriers in the area. Yes I'd like to save money. My one year initial contract had expired and I was paying full price. $75 for 105Mb. I was paying $35 per month for 105Mb, but that's what had expired a couple months back. The new offer was $70 for 250Mb. So I am paying $5 less for ~ 2.5x the speed. I thought that offer was back into bargain territory. Normal price for 250Mb is $150 with Comcast in my area.

So her offers were $50 for 10Mb, $60 for 25Mb, stay with what I had at $75 at 105MB, or take her offer for $70 for 250Mb. Given those options there isn't another rational choice.

This was the third time I had called and was the best deal I'd been offered yet.
Given fiber isn't an option around me, I don't think that's too bad. No its not cheap, but it's saving five a moth for the best available outside of fiber.
 
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I'm always dumbfounded at how ISPs and lot of people seem to think wifi has something to do with the internet connection. It's just a transport, you could use wifi with dialup if you wanted to or use wifi for a network with no internet at all!

I always face palm when ISPs promote wifi as a feature to a service package too. Most people really fall for it too, and pay per month extra for it.
 
Time Warner sold my daughter 200 Mb plan, and she lives by herself. I asked her why so much. It was part of a package. I suppose it won't hurt, but I doubt it's going to be 200 Mb with her wireless devices. Even if it was, I don't know any websites that could respond that quickly.

I just found out because I was remotely helping her switch to her own cable modem. BTW, her first expert that she was chatting online wasn't capable of activating her modem. ;) Luckily, the second one was when she called. It seems obvious these are cable companies that provide internet. Still, if you don't have any viable alternatives, I guess we'll keep using them.
 
Shit, that explains why my 4/1 doesn't work with my wifi :(
 
Here’s my experience with Comcast in summary form during the last two weeks.

  1. Historically - I have service with zero problems for almost 1.5 years at 105Mbs – This was my first experience with Comcast and I’m not sure to this point what all the negative press was about.
  2. I wanted to lower my price, but decide to pursue a deal offered – 250Mbs for $70 – It doesn’t work, and what’s more when they turn the speed up – it’s actually slower than before --- after much troubleshooting it is found my (self purchased) cable modem (from their approved list capable of 350Mbps) is not compatible with their firmware for 250Mbps – so my service is artificially limited to 60Mbps due to some sort of negotiation. I spent hours on tech support call to determine this, escalating to two level 3 agents. With each call having to be routed from level 1 to level 3 – with attempts at upselling me at opportunistic times. (TV packages!)
  3. Since my cable modem supposedly does not support 250Mbps service - I make a new deal with billing for 150Mbps service for $60 (rather than rent one of their modems, or buy a new one). After hours with tech support the best I can get is 12Mb per second following the new service tier firmware push. Now again - multiple calls with Tech support, It works at 150Mbps for 1 day after each reset, then back to 12Mbps throttling. I spent multiple nights on the phone with Comcast last week and the week before. I am told a field technician will come to my house to fix the issue – which is low downstream voltage and uncorrected FEC errors.
  4. The Comcast field technician comes to my house, says there is nothing wrong with my voltage and I have no errors. He sighs and sounds exasperated about what I was told on the phone. He fiddles with my PC settings (after he says he’s not supposed to actually mess with PC configs, but doesn’t know how else to fix the problem) – when he leaves, my service is NOT fixed – he said I needed a new NIC card, because it is apparently the problem. When he’s gone I reverted his settings (he changed my OS to use 4 CPU cores (instead of 8) and maxed out memory to the OS manually (which was previously just set to auto = windows defaults) under the advanced system configuration. After I reverted his changes to the OS default – I rebooted the machine. Then my PC wouldn’t load the OS – I got windows 10 error messages about a bad config file. (I watched what he did on my machine, he didn’t know what he was doing (got RAM and CPU confused in terminology), but as far as I could tell he didn’t do anything that should have made the OS fail) Any rate – the changes broke my OS. I couldn’t go to safe mode, I couldn’t use a restore point – so I was forced to reload my OS on Saturday afternoon.

I spent about a dozen hours with Comcast last week, -- every touch made things one step worse – which laughably ended up with a grenaded machine OS by the onsite technician.

Talk about bad customer service. Now I know!

The silver lining --- now, for some reason my 150Mbps works after the OS reload. We’ll see if it stays that way.
 
Wow.. Thats some rough customer service.

I recently had to call Time Warner. Got transfered to level 2 and within about 15 minutes figured out my modem had went bad (no idea why). Guy offered to call back that evening to give me time to run out an get a new one. Phone rang within 10 minutes of the decided time.

I was pleased.
 
Archaea said:
The silver lining --- now, for some reason my 150Mbps works after the OS reload. We’ll see if it stays that way.
Click to expand...

What speeds were you and are you getting with your laptop throughout this whole ordeal?
 
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